CORRECTIONAL REPORTED FOR VIOLATING TRANS WOMAN

MBABANE – His Majesty’s Correctional Services (HMCS) has been reported for allegedly violating a transgender woman and forcing her to stop hormonal therapy.

A transgender woman is someone who was born a male but identifies as a female. A transgender person’s gender identity is not the same as the sex recorded on their birth certificate. The Eswatini Commission on Human Rights and Public Administration stated that it had noted that the country was still lagging behind in addressing the issues faced by key populations as well as people in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LGBTQI) community.

Human Rights Defender Nelisiwe Zwane, from the Human Rights Commission, was speaking during an event that brought together government departments as well as non-governmental organisations. The aim of the event was to have a multisectoral conversation around laws and access for key populations. During the event, different stakeholders had an opportunity to explain their role in advancing an enabling environment for key populations. During a panel discussion, the human rights defender gave an insight of the role that had been played by the commission in creating an enabling environment for key populations as well as the LGBTQI community in the country.

Zwane said the commission received complaints from key populations, more especially the LGBTQI. She said there was a particular case, where a transgender woman reported human rights violation at the hands of HMCS officers. She said the complaint included harassment and being degraded among other issues. Zwane said the transgender woman reported that when she was admitted to the HMCS, she was searched by warders instead of being searched by wardresses. Zwane said the reason the complainant felt she had to be searched by wardresses was because she identified as a woman, besides being born a biological man.

During the search, Zwane told the meeting that the transgender woman said the officers made a mockery of her. In addition, she said all the officers in the facility were called to look at her and made funny and derogative statements about her gender and how she looked. Zwane added that the transgender woman also stated that she found herself being punished for a number of issues. During her admission to the facility, Zwane said the transgender woman was on feminising hormone therapy. Upon admission, Zwane said the transgender woman was prohibited from taking the treatment.

“She was stopped from taking the treatment because the service said they would not promote the demonic activity,” she said. Further, Zwane said the commission made its own findings and made recommendations to HMCS. She said the commission indeed uncovered that the transgender woman’s rights were grossly violated.

Uncovered

Furthermore, Zwane said the commission uncovered that key populations in Eswatini were not involved in decision making that affected them.
She also highlighted mental health challenges that were channelled by the discrimination they faced in their families and communities.
Zwane also highlighted the danger that some transgendered people went through as they went through hormonal therapy. She said since hormonal injections or medication was prohibited for people whose gender was transitioning, some of those individuals resorted to black market products.
Zwane said black market products were endangering the lives of transgender people, because that sector was not regulated.

She added that gender identity markers were still a challenge because a number of them faced challenges when travelling. She said that was a challenge for mostly transgender people as well as gender non-binary individuals. She explained that transgender people found themselves being searched in a manner that would be violating and harsh as compared to cis-gender people. “A transgender woman’s passport may refer to her as a man yet she would be looking like a man and the similar case to transgender man,” she said. She said the officials normally gave transgender people a hard time because they would want to confirm if they were indeed the owners of the passport, for that reason they found themselves undergoing uncomfortable inspections, of which some of them would be humiliating.

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